50 years of the MLB Draft: Part 1

50 Signature Developments in 50 Years of Drafting
Major League Baseball is conducting its 50thfirst-year player draft this week, and we thought it would be a Golden Opportunity to take a 50-year retrospective on the baseball draft as part of our general preview coverage of this year’s proceedings.

Naturally, we’ve enlisted our resident draft historian, Allan Simpson, to take a look back at some of the highlights—and lowlights—of the draft through the years, and shed some of his own perspective on how the draft has evolved, and the impact it has had on the game.

Allan has done so by randomly selecting a cross-section of 50 signature moments, developments, topics or trends in draft history, beginning with the first draft in 1965. He has focused on some of the best and worst picks ever made, drafts that changed the fortunes of franchises—positively or negatively—for years to come, the success and failure rates of select draft picks, changing demographics and the impact escalating signing bonuses have had on the process. He has also slipped in a few draft trivia-related items that even some of the more-knowledgeable observers of the draft may never have been aware of.We’ll run our 50/50 special over a two-day period, with the first 25 items scheduled for today and the other 25 on Tuesday—in plenty of time to digest a little draft history before the 50thdraft kicks off with a bang on Thursday.

The Baseball Draft: 1965-2014
A Fifty-Year RetrospectiveTen
Most Iconic Moments
There
have been plenty of attention-getting moments or developments over
the near-50-year life of the baseball draft, but here, in a nutshell,
are 10 that stand out most.

1. Bo Knows Baseball
The
Kansas City Royals scored a major coup for baseball with their bold,
calculated move in 1986 to snatch away Bo
Jackson,
the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick in that
year’s football draft, right from under the nose of the NFL. With
his exceptional power/speed package, Jackson may be the single
greatest raw talent to play Major League Baseball in the draft era,
and his impact on the game—even in his brief, injury-riddled
career—was substantial.
2. Twice The Hype
Few
players in draft history have been as talented or generated more
pre-draft hype as righthander Stephen
Strasburg
(Class of 2009) and catcher Bryce
Harper
(Class of 2010)—and the Washington Nationals hit the jackpot by
drafting both in consecutive years. Rarely has the baseball draft
been so relevant in the mindset of the national conscience as it was
with this pair, though a case can be made that Louisiana State
righthander Ben McDonald
created his own draft magic in 1989, when he was every bit as much of
a pre-determined No. 1 pick then as Strasburg 20 years later.

3. Sign of Things to Come
The
New York Yankees sent shock waves through the industry in 1991, when
they signed North Carolina prep lefthander Brien
Taylor,
the No. 1 overall pick that year, to a $1.55 million bonus—almost
three times the existing record. The old mark of $575,000 was set in
1989 by John Olerud, a third-round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, and
matched earlier in 1991 by Mike Kelly, drafted second by the Atlanta
Braves. Taylor’s contract, signed just hours before he was set to
enroll at Louisburg (N.C.) Junior College, triggered an unprecedented
wave of bonus escalation that would continue largely unabated over
the better part of the next two decades. The Yankees got nothing for
their investment in Taylor as his promising career careened downhill,
topping in Double-A, after he injured his shoulder in a fight.

4. Sacrificial Lamb
Texas
schoolboy lefthander David
Clyde
fashioned one of the greatest careers in prep baseball annals, making
him a near slam-dunk choice as the No. 1 pick in 1973. The Texas
Rangers showed no hesitation in drafting him, and the move played
right into the hands of opportunistic owner Bob Short, who saw in
Clyde a windfall opportunity to give his ailing franchise a
significant shot in the arm. Clyde was promoted directly to the
Rangers rotation, and not only did he win his much-hyped debut, but
the sideshow that accompanied it provided Short’s transplanted
Rangers their first-ever sellout. Short’s short-sighted cash grab,
however, came at a significant cost as an emotionally-scarred,
ill-prepared Clyde went only 18-33 in his big-league career—hardly
the performance worthy of his talent, and nothing like the careers
enjoyed by future Hall of Famers Robin Yount and Dave Winfield, who
were taken with the third and fourth picks overall that year.

5. Opportunistic Strike
If
ever there was a case for a draft and its inherent powers to suppress
bonus payments, the Loophole Free-Agent Fiasco of 1996 provided it.First-rounders
Travis Lee
(Twins), John Patterson
(Expos), Matt White
(Giants) and Bobby Seay
(White Sox) all became free agents that year after successfully
challenging a little-enforced rule in the Professional Baseball
Agreement that required clubs to tender formal contract offers to
their draft picks within 15 days of being selected. The snafu
coincided with recently-minted expansion teams in Arizona and Tampa
Bay, and those clubs saw the free agents as a windfall opportunity to
add frontline talent not otherwise available to them. Between them,
the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays signed all four, shelling out signing
bonuses totaling roughly $30 million. White, a promising Pennsylvania
high-school righthander who was under consideration to be drafted
first overall, signed the largest bonus of the four, a staggering
$10.2 million, but was the only one of the quartet never to play in
the big leagues.

6. Baseball’s Ultimate Human-Interest Story
Jim
Abbott
was born without a right hand, but never let his handicap stand in
his way from assembling one of the most-inspirational careers of the
draft era. After becoming the only baseball player to win the James
E. Sullivan Award, symbolic of the nation’s best amateur athlete,
to cap off a vintage college career at Michigan, Abbott was taken by
the California Angels with the eighth pick in the 1988 draft, and
only added to his growing aura by leading the U.S. to gold that fall
at the Seoul Olympics. Understandably, the atmosphere in Anaheim was
at a fever pitch the following spring when Abbott made his
long-awaited pro debut as one of only 21 picks in draft history to
play in a major-league game without first appearing in the minors.
Abbott went on to pitch 11 years in the majors, and his 1993
no-hitter, while a member of the New York Yankees, may have been his
only outing that usurped his emotion-charged debut.

7. Lightning Rod For Controversy
The
baseball draft has had its share of noteworthy holdouts and
controversial, contentious signings through the years, but few
players struck a chord that reverberated throughout the game quite
like outfielder J.D. Drew.
His antics were not only felt over the course of two drafts, but led
to a renaming of the very draft itself. As a talented, much-in-demand
junior outfielder at Florida State in 1997, Drew was drafted second
overall by the Phillies, but he and agent Scott Boras caused such
furor and consternation in Philadelphia with a contentious
negotiation that a deal between the parties was never struck. Rather
than simply return to FSU for his senior year, Drew opted to forego
his remaining amateur status by signing on to play in the independent
Northern League the next spring. But his overriding intent was not to
prepare himself for the 1998 draft so much as it was to become a free
agent, and he subsequently pleaded his case to an arbitrator that he
was then a professional, and thus no longer subject to baseball’s
“amateur” draft. Major League Baseball moved quickly and
successfully to defend and defuse the unprecedented maneuver, and it
was ascertained that Drew would still be subject to the
newly-remained “First-Year Player Draft” in 1998. Drew tore up
the Northern League in his brief tenure and again dominated much of
the pre-draft hype in his second go-around, but the Phillies,
selecting first that year, steered well clear of him and Drew ended
up going to the Cardinals with the fifth pick, and signed shortly
thereafter.

8. The Dilemma
Major-league
teams have routinely agonized over selecting one talent vs. another
throughout draft history, and the stakes are never higher than with
the team in the often-unenviable position of drafting first. The 1966
draft has served as a constant reminder of the potential consequences
involved. The New York Mets were in a quandary that year over whether
to pick California high-school catcher Steve
Chilcott
or Arizona State outfielder Reggie
Jackson
with the No. 1 pick. They opted for Chilcott, and have never quite
lived down that decision through the years as Chilcott failed to
reach the majors in seven injury-plagued minor league seasons, while
Jackson went on to enjoy a much-celebrated, Hall of Fame career—much
of it spent in New York with the cross-town Yankees, where he was a
constant reminder to the Mets of what could have been.

9. Finally, a Workable Solution
The
baseball draft was instituted in 1965 as something of a last-resort
measure after big-league officials felt they had exhausted all other
potential avenues in trying to solve an age-old problem: containing
escalating bonus payments to amateur players. For the better part of
the next 25 years, the draft served its intended purpose of
controlling bonuses (while also distributing talent equally among
clubs), but with the game in a growth spurt and suddenly awash in
cash in the late-80s and early-90s, clubs began spending more freely
on high-school and college talent, and bonuses soon skyrocketed. From
a first-round average of $176,008 in 1989, the norm grew to more than
$2 million by 2001 and peaked at $2,653,375 in 2011. Try as it might,
the commissioner’s office was almost powerless in its variety of
efforts to scale back bonuses, and it became almost like history
repeating itself, 50 years later, with the very foundation of the
game under attack stemming from another potential crisis related to
the payment of lofty signing bonuses. In the fall of 2011, though, a
new Basic Agreement that targeted the draft and its inequities
ushered in the most-sweeping changes to the draft since the very
process was instituted 47 years earlier. Among the measures aimed at
limiting bonuses in the future was the establishment of aggregate
signing bonus pools, which set an upper limit on the amount that
teams could spend on their draft picks in the first 10 rounds, and
enforceable penalties—in the form of fines and forfeited draft
picks—if a team failed to comply to the new standards and exceeded
its assigned bonus limit.

10. Age of Enlightenment
The
baseball draft may never be confused with the NFL and NBA drafts in
terms of its popularity and rightful place on the American sporting
landscape, but it has become exponentially more visible—and
popular—over the last decade. That stems in large part from Major
League Baseball’s decision to finally remove the shackles of
secrecy and openly promote the draft as a meaningful event on the
baseball calendar. For the better part of 20 years, MLB went to great
lengths to protect its proprietary rights to basic draft content, to
a point of temporarily withholding the public dissemination of
information on its draft picks, especially as some of it might be
used to advantage by agents and college coaches. In a nine-draft
stretch from 1989-97, MLB even went so far as to withhold the
releasing the names of drafted players (with the exception of the
first round) for a week after the draft, and then only in
alphabetical order by clubs. The round-by-round order was not made
public for a period of months. But this author, back in his day as
the editor-in-chief of Baseball America, long the media leader in
meaningful draft coverage, openly defied Major League Baseball’s
edict on secrecy, and challenged the commissioner’s office to make
the entire draft list, round-by-round, available immediately—even
threatening, on the eve of the 1998 draft, to piece together a
minimum of the first 10 rounds through industry sources, and
publishing it essentially in real time. When MLB officials got wind
of BA’s intentions to circumvent their short-sighted blackout
policy, the commissioner’s office quickly backed down from its
long-standing, hands-off stance, and in a complete reversal of
policy, it made all 1998 draft content (all 50 rounds) available
immediately. Major League Baseball has since come full circle in its
willingness and desire to openly promote its primary
player-procurement process, with on-site television coverage as a
primary medium, and the popularity of the baseball draft has soared
in the process.

Other
Signature Developments in Draft History

11.Rick Monday, Forever No. 1
Then
a 19-year-old sophomore outfielder from College World Series champion
Arizona State, Monday was taken first overall in the first draft in
1965 by the Kansas City Athletics. He was awarded a $100,000 signing
bonus by A’s owner Charles O. Finley, exactly half the record
pre-draft amount that Rick Reichardt received a year earlier from the
Los Angeles Angels—a bonus considered so extravagant at the time
that it was the trigger point for a draft system finally being
instituted a year later. After Monday, who enjoyed a distinguished
16-year big-league career and remains in the game as a play-by-play
broadcaster with the Los Angeles Dodgers, bonuses were so suppressed
in a restrictive draft system that it would be 11 more years before
another draft pick received a six-figure bonus.

12. Growing Impact on Hall of Fame
There
have been 1,326 first-round picks (June, regular phase) since the
inception of the draft. To date, seven have gone on to become Hall of
Famers, although that number will certainly grow with time,
especially as today’s active players complete their careers and the
most-deserving ones serve out the mandatory five-year wait until
their eligibility for the Hall kicks in. Of note, no player selected
first overall has ever been elected to the Hall of Fame, though that
will undoubtedly change soon, or once Ken
Griffey Jr.
(Class of 1987) and Chipper
Jones
(Class of 1990), who assembled Hall-of-Fame worthy careers, become
eligible. The highest-drafted current Hall of Famer is Reggie
Jackson,
the second pick in 1966, while Robin
Yount
(Class of 1973) and Paul
Molitor
(Class of 1977) were both third-overall picks of the Milwaukee Brewers.
They were followed in quick order by Dave
Winfield
(Class of 1973) and Barry
Larkin
(Class of 1985), fourth overall picks in their respective draft
classes. In all, 26 draft picks have gone on to become Hall of
Famers, though that number will swell by three this summer when Greg
Maddux
and Tom Glavine,
both second-rounders in 1984, and Frank
Thomas
(Class of 1989) are inducted. Thomas is the most recent draft pick to
be selected. With the inclusion of Maddux and Glavine, the second
round will have produced six Hall of Famers and the third round five.
Technically, the lowest-round draft pick to reach the Hall of Fame is
Ryne Sandberg,
a 20th-rounder
in 1978, but Bruce Sutter
was a 21st-round
pick of the Washington Senators in 1970 out of a Pennsylvania high
school, although he didn’t sign at the time. After briefly
attending college at Old Dominion but dropping out soon enough to be
eligible for the 1971 draft, Sutter went undrafted and later signed
with the Chicago Cubs as a free agent.

13.Footnotes in Draft History
Only
21 draft picks have played in a major-league game without first
auditioning in the minor leagues. Just one, third baseman Bob
Horner,
who set the collegiate career home-run record at Arizona State in
1978 on his way to being picked first overall that year by the
Atlanta Braves, completely justified his case for starting his career
on top as he homered 23 times in 89 games after signing with the
Braves and earned National League rookie-of-the-year honors in the
process. Two more collegiate stars, Dave
Roberts
(Oregon) and Dave Winfield
(Minnesota),
also had representative debuts after being taken straight to the big
leagues in consecutive drafts (1972-73) by the San Diego Padres. The
phenomenon occurred 12 times in the 1970s, including all four
instances where a team attempted to capitalize on the publicity value
of a first-round pitcher making his professional debut in the big
leagues, as was overtly the case with David
Clyde
(Rangers) in 1973, and Eddie
Bane
(Twins), Tim Conroy
(A’s) and Mike Morgan
(A’s) in 1978. A fourth 1978 draft pick, prep catcher Brian
Milner,
began his career in Toronto as an inducement to forego a promising
college football career, and went an encouraging 4-for-9, but was
never heard from again after being sent to the minors. Several more
draft picks debuted in the big leagues because they were signed to
rare major-league contracts—John
Olerud
(Blue Jays) in 1989, Darren
Dreifort
(Dodgers) in 1993, Ariel
Prieto
(A’s) in 1995 and Xavier
Nady
(Padres) in 2000, to name the most recent few. Others like Pete
Incaviglia
(Expos, later traded to the Rangers as a condition of his signing) in
1985, Jim Abbott
(Angels) in 1988 and Mike
Leake
(Reds) in 2009 didn’t begin their professional careers until the
following year, and had the obvious advantage of a full
spring-training camp to better acclimate them to the pro game. The
first three picks in the secondary phase of the 1971
draft—righthanders Pete
Broberg
and Burt Hooton,
and third baseman Rob
Ellis—all
were taken directly to the big leagues. Righthander Mike
Adamson,
meanwhile, holds the distinction of being the first drafted player to
debut in the big leagues. An unsigned first-rounder of the
Philadelphia Phillies in 1965, Adamson attended college at Southern
California for two years before being taken by Baltimore with the
initial selection in the June, 1967 secondary phase. Adamson’s stay
was short-lived, and he never went on to win a big-league game in his
professional career.

14. Draft For the Ages: Part I
Though
the draft was still in its infancy in 1968, and baseball executives
were still trying to figure out the nuances of piecing together a
successful draft strategy, the Los Angeles Dodgers seemed to have all
the answers that year. The motherlode of talent they assembled still
stands the test of time as the greatest single draft ever. The
Dodgers drafted three-fourths of an infield (first baseman Steve
Garvey,
second baseman Davey Lopes
and third baseman Ron Cey)
that, along with shortstop Bill Russell (a 1966 draft pick), remained
intact for almost nine years, and led the team to three pennants in
the 1970s with it all culminating in 1981, when the Dodgers won the
World Series. Fifteen players were drafted by the Dodgers in 1968
that went on to play in the big leagues. Bobby
Valentine
and Bill Buckner
were selected in the first two rounds, but the team also landed
established future big-leaguers like Tom
Paciorek
in the fifth round, Joe
Ferguson
in the eighth and Doyle
Alexander
in the ninth. As previously-drafted college players, Garvey (first
round) and Cey (third) were subject to the secondary phase of the
June draft that year, while Lopes was a product of the January
secondary phase.

15.Inexact Science: Part I
The
baseball draft stands apart from drafts in all other major
professional team sports because it deals with unfinished products.
As a result, there is often a significant degree of projection
involved in establishing the future worth of a typical drafted
player, especially raw high-school talent. The more projection
involved, the greater the chance for a mistake being committed, and
there have been some colossal gaffes in the first round through the
years. Perhaps none has been as graphic as the Minnesota Twins
selection of Wisconsin high-school outfielder Kevin
Brandt
with the 11th pick in 1979. Brandt was so overmatched that he was released by the
Twins little more than a year later, after hitting a meager .155-1-9
in 47 Rookie-league games. His equivalent counterpart on the mound,
righthander Mark Snyder,
who was chosen 12th overall by the Cleveland Indians in 1982, never won a game in pro
ball, going 0-5, 7.20 in 11 appearances, none above low Class A,
though in fairness his career was ravaged by arm problems.

16. Better Late Than Never
Today’s
draft is limited to 40 rounds, a reduction from the 50 rounds that
were in place from 1998-2011. But from the outset of the draft in
1965 until 1997 (with the exception of 1992, when there were 50
rounds), teams could draft at will—and often did so beginning in
1987, when the draft was consolidated from four phases (two in
January, two in June) to a single June phase. The New York Yankees
took things to an extreme in 1996, when they drafted through a record
100 rounds—though they actually selected future big-leaguers Clay
Condrey
in the 94th round and Scott Seabol
in the 88th.
Condrey never signed with the Yankees and didn’t agree to a pro
deal for another six years when he was signed by the San Diego Padres
as a free agent out of McNeese State University, but went on to pitch
six years in the big leagues. He stands as the latest draft pick to
ever play in the big leagues. Righthander Travis
Phelps,
meanwhile, holds the distinction of being the lowest-round pick to
reach the big leagues with the team that drafted and signed him. He
was taken in the 89th
round by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays out of Crowder (Mo.) JC in 1996 on
his way to a three-year, big-league career, the first two with the
Rays.

17. Best draft I: 1985
With
headliners like Barry Bonds,
Barry Larkin,Rafael Palmeiro,
Will Clark
and B.J.Surhoff,
the star-quality talent that came out of the first round of the 1985
draft trumps any draft in history—though 2005, in time, could give
it a run for its money. Led by that quintet, the cumulative WAR (Wins
Above Replacement) value of the first round in 1985 is 495.7—easily
better than the first round of any draft. The talent produced didn’t
stop there, either, as Randy
Johnson
was taken in the second round and John
Smoltz
was a 23rd-round
afterthought. And that doesn’t even begin to address the likes of
Bobby Witt and
Pete Incaviglia,
the third and eighth overall picks that year, or Bo
Jackson,
an obvious first-round talent who lasted until the 20th round because of his football obligations at Auburn, and didn’t
sign for another year. None of those three displayed the sustained
success over their careers like some of the more-acclaimed
first-rounders in the 1985 draft, but Incaviglia hit 48 home runs
that year at Oklahoma State to set an NCAA record that may never be
broken, while Witt and Jackson often showed flashes of brilliance—a
testament to their still being the only players in draft history to
score a perfect 80 on the Major League Scouting Bureau’s 20-to-80
grading scale. It was no coincidence that the star power that
characterized the 1985 draft was almost all college players who had
also factored prominently into the top 10 rounds of the 1982 draft,
as high-school players, only to go unsigned. In the end, there is
little disputing the 1985 draft’s lofty WAR ranking, but that
measuring stick doesn’t differentiate whether a player signed, so
the cumulative WAR score through Rounds 1-5 in 1982 (845.3) is
actually higher than for 1985 (749.0). Bonds, Larkin and Jackson were
all unsigned second-rounders in 1982, which accounts for that round
producing the highest WAR grade on record. Additionally, Clark and
Johnson were unsigned fourth-rounders in 1982, which accounts for
that round having the highest all-time WAR score.

18. Meagre Investment
Third
baseman Bob Jones,
the 20th and last pick in the first round in 1966, has the distinction of
receiving the smallest signing bonus of any first-rounder in draft
history—a meager $9,000 investment by the Minnesota Twins.
Predictably, Jones never played above Class A in four minor-league
seasons. Shortstop David
Espinosa,
meanwhile, received no bonus at all upon signing with the Cincinnati
Reds as the 23rd overall pick in 2000. He held out all summer trying to reach an
accord with the Reds and finally agreed to a unique, incentive-laden
deal that provided a significant payoff if, and when he reached the
big leagues, but Espinosa never surfaced above Triple-A in a 10-year
minor-league career.

19. Thanks, But No Thanks
Over
the near-50-year life of the draft, six players have been selected in
the first round (June, regular phase) who never went on to play
professional baseball—not counting recent unsigned Blue Jays draft
picks Tyler Beede (2011) and Phil Bickford (2013), and Padres pick
Karsten Whitson (2010), who are still in college. Three of the six
chose to pursue football careers, including Condredge
Holloway
(Expos, 1974), who played four years of baseball at Tennessee and in
the process became the first African-American quarterback in
Southeastern Conference history. Holloway later went on to a 13-year,
Hall-of-Fame career as a quarterback in the Canadian Football League.
Former Montreal Expos officials still maintain that Holloway chose
playing in the SEC over a career in baseball because he made more
money playing football in college than the Expos offered him as a
signing bonus. In 1986, Greg
McMurtry,a
Massachusetts high-school product, opted to play football at Michigan
rather than sign with the hometown Red Sox, and eventually went on to
an NFL career as a wide receiver.

20. Coming of Age
From
1965-80, the first round of the draft (June, regular phase) was
heavily populated by high-school players with 296 selections overall,
compared to just 78 from the four-year college ranks and one from
junior college. One player was picked who was not attending a school
of any kind. In 1971, all 24 players drafted in the first round were
from high school. Those numbers are skewed to a large degree, though,
as many of the better college players from that era were subject only
to the secondary phase—especially if they were re-drafts, though
the rules that applied to previously-drafted players were frequently
amended, and eventually almost all college players that had been
drafted out of high school became the domain of the conventional June
regular phase. In 1981, though, there was a sudden and dramatic shift
in demographics with 17 of 26 first-round picks coming from college,
and 34 of the first 50—double the previous record. The
reverberations were felt throughout the draft as twice as many
college players as high school players were selected that year, and a
record-low 113 prep players signed overall. By 1985, the influence of
college baseball on the draft had become so pronounced that 11 of the
first 12 selections were from the college ranks, and most drafts
since have been more heavily-weighted towards college talent.

21. Worst Draft I: 1975
The
talent in the 1975 draft wasn’t necessarily the weakest ever, but
the way it was distributed in the first round certainly was. Only 12
of 24 first-rounders that year played in the big leagues, but that
included only one of the first five selections. And that player was
none other than Danny Goodwin,
who has distinction in draft history for becoming the only player
selected twice with the first overall pick—in 1971, and again in
1975. Curiously, Goodwin was drafted as a catcher on both
occasions—first out of an Illinois high school, later as a
four-year starter out of Southern University—and yet never caught
even one game in the big leagues in an undistinguished, seven-year
big-league career. With an overall WAR (Wins Above Replacement) value
of just 10.7, the first round of the 1975 draft easily was the worst
on record (at 61.9, 1970 was next). Only three players, catcher Rick
Cerone,
outfielder Clint Hurdle
and infielder Dale Berra,
had careers of at least 10 years—though barely. Perhaps most
curious, big-league teams saw fit to sign more players that year to
major-league contracts (six, including Goodwin) than any draft in
history, though all six did eventually reach the big leagues,
including four that year. If there was any salvation, future Hall of
Famer Andre Dawson
came out of that year’s draft, though he was miscast as an
11th-rounder,
while one-time career saves leader Lee
Smith
went in the second round, future American League batting champion
Carney Lansford
was taken in the third and five-time all-star Lou
Whitaker
went in the fifth.

22. Sixty-seven thousand and counting . . .
In
49 drafts to date, there have been 67,557 players drafted. Another
1,216 should be added once this year’s proceedings are complete,
assuming that all 30 major-league clubs will draft their full
allotment through 40 rounds. The number of players drafted through
the years has varied, depending on the number of allowable
rounds—though there was no limit through 1991, and from 1993-97. In
1992, and again from 1998-2011, there were 50 rounds. Since 2011, the
draft has been confined to 40 rounds. The most players drafted in any
year occurred in 1996, when there were 1,740 selections. Last year’s
total of 1,216—the same as this year’s anticipated mark—was the
smallest since the draft was consolidated from four phases to one in
1987. Prior to that, the fewest number of draft picks occurred in
1974, when 1,020 players were selected overall, and just 726 in the
June, regular phase.

23. Look Who’s Picking No. 1
The
Houston Astros pick first overall in this year’s draft, marking the
first time that a team has had the top selection in three consecutive
years. They earned the dubious distinction by finishing with the
worst record in the big leagues in each of the last three years,
posting the only 100-loss seasons in club history in the process.
Previously, the Tampa Bay Rays (2007-08) and Washington Nationals
(2009-10) were the only teams to pick first in consecutive years,
though the practice would have happened in previous years had Major
League Baseball always awarded the top pick to the major-league team
with the poorest record. Prior to 2005, the pick alternated yearly
between National and American League teams. By drafting first again,
the Astros tie the New York Mets and San Diego Padres as teams that
have had the top pick five times over the life of the draft.
Pittsburgh, Seattle and Tampa Bay have selected first four times.
Meanwhile, Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Colorado, the Los Angeles
Dodgers. St. Louis, San Francisco and Toronto have never selected
first overall.

24. Risky Demographic I: High-School RighthandersIt
speaks volumes about the risky nature of drafting high-school
righthanders that not a single player in that demographic has ever
been selected No. 1 overall, though a prep righty has gone second on
seven occasions, most prominently J.R. Richard in 1969 and Josh
Beckett in 1999. No high-school righthander drafted anywhere in the
first round has been selected to the Hall of Fame, though Rick
Sutcliffe (1973), Dwight Gooden (1982), Kerry Wood (1995), Roy
Halladay (1995), Adam Wainwright (2000) and Zack Greinke (2002) have
had noteworthy careers, and the recently-retired Halladay, in
particular, appears on destined for Cooperstown. Despite being shut
out on first-rounders, the Hall of Fame does include four prep
righthanders from the draft era that are enshrined, in Nolan Ryan
(1965/10th round), Bert Blyleven (1969/third round), Goose Gossage (1970/ninth
round) and Dennis Eckersley (1972/third round), and Greg Maddux
(1982/second round) will make it five when inducted in July. Of the
grand total of 188 high-school righthanders drafted in the first
round between 1965 and 2009 (no allowance has been made for pitchers
drafted from 2010-13 to give them a fair chance to reach the big
leagues), only 118, or 62.7 percent, have played in the big leagues.
By contrast, 27 first-round prep righthanders in the draft era never
advanced in the minor leagues beyond Class A.

25. Misguided Intentions Set Tone for Yankees Drafts
The
draft strategy of the New York Yankees during George Steinbrenner’s
early ownership reign was often a factor of (a.) his fixation for
football players (he was an assistant coach in college in his younger
days), (b.) penchant for stretching rules to his and his club’s
advantage, (c.) general loathing for a draft system that prevented
the Yankees from gaining access to their share of the best-available
amateur talent and (d.) the heavy investment the Yankees annually
made in the major-league free-agent market, which routinely came at
the expense of a first-round pick. The period from 1979-82, in
particular, provides a colorful sidebar into Steinbrenner’s
penchant for meddling. The Yankees forfeited every one of their
top-round selections in those years, yet never failed to create their
share of draft headlines. In 1979, the Yankees drafted power-hitting
Oklahoma high-school first baseman Todd Demeter, son of ex-big
leaguer Don Demeter, in the second round after he conveniently fell
into their lap when other teams passed on him in the first round
after determining his price tag was too extravagant. The Yankees,
undeterred, promptly forked over a then-draft record $208, 000 bonus
to sign Demeter, who briefly rose as high as Double-A in seven
seasons in the Yankees system. A year later, the draft tactics of the
Yankees became highly suspicious when they didn’t have a pick in
either of the first two rounds, and yet were able to draft Billy
Cannon, son of the former Heisman Trophy winner and one of the top
talents in that year’s draft, in the third round. After an
investigation by the commissioner’s office after several clubs blew
the whistle on the Yankees, it was determined that the Cannon family
had conspired with the Yankees to float out an artificially-high
price tag for Cannon’s services that would make him unsignable in
the eyes of other clubs, and enable him to slide to the Yankees. The
selection was subsequently voided. The Yankees were the only team
Cannon wanted to play for, had he sign to play baseball. He chose
instead to play football in college and subsequently became a
first-round draft pick of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. In 1981, the
Yankees took Stanford quarterback John Elway with their top pick
(second round) and gave him a $75,000 bonus to play six weeks in
their farm system. The Yankees hoped Elway might choose baseball over
football by getting a taste of playing in their system, but Elway
never played baseball again before going on to become the No. 1 pick
in the 1983 NFL draft. In 1982, the Yankees took a flier on Bo
Jackson in the second round, but made little headway in signing the
Alabama football-baseball star before he went on to a record-breaking
football career at Auburn. Like Elway, he would also become the No. 1
pick in the NFL draft, in 1986. In the end result, the Yankees had
little to show for all their expensive free-agent forays, attempts to
circumvent the traditional draft process and misguided dealings in
trying to woo elite-level football players. But they did manage to
make good, through the process of traditional scouting, on a lowly
17th round pick in 1979, Don Mattingly.